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Besides the schout, burgomasters, and schepens, the remonstrance was signed by Wilmerdonck and eighty-five of the principal inhabitants, among whom was Stuyvesant's own son, Balthazar. At last the director was obliged to yield.
Reilly's reluctant words gave proof that discussion of some kind had occurred, and Stuyvesant broke away and was apparently wrathful at being compelled to go back; then more words, longer detention; then a swift-running form, Stuyvesant's, away from the scene; then the fatal pistol; and against this chain of circumstances only the unsupported statement of the accused that he left that revolver on the table in the salon, left it where it was never afterwards seen.
Murray, alias Spence, alias Sackett, fugitive from justice, could not be aboard that ship unless he had burrowed beneath the coal in the bunkers, in which event the stokers promised he should be shovelled into the furnaces as soon as discovered. Every sailor's lodging in the town was ransacked, but to no purpose: Murray could not be found. For a fortnight Stuyvesant's fate was in doubt.
The party stopped a moment at the threshold, one of the officers was saying good-night, and then a voice at Stuyvesant's elbow said "Which is Lieutenant Ray?" It was the bell-boy. A sudden inspiration came to Stuyvesant. "What is it?" he said. "Have you a message for him?" "Yes," was the answer. "They're telephoning for him from the Presidio, want him to come at once."
They have salted us too long. We know where their booty is stored. And we know also where the young girls live who wear gold chains." Under these circumstances the governor was compelled to yield. He appointed six commissioners to confer with the same number of the English. The parties met at Governor Stuyvesant's residence on his farm or bouwerie, at eight o'clock in the morning of August 27th.
Within the heated cars, with flushed faces and plying palm-leaf fans, a few of the women passengers were languidly gazing from the windows. At the centre window of the second sleeper, without a palm-leaf and looking serene and unperturbed, sat the young girl whose lovely face had so excited Mr. Stuyvesant's deep admiration.
So on the second day the doctor yielded, and all that day and the third of the storm, by which time the starboard deck was slowly becoming peopled with a few spectral and barely animate feminine shapes, Stuyvesant reclined within arm's length of the dark-eyed girl who had so entranced him, studying her beauty, drinking in her words, and gaining such health and strength in the life-giving air and such bliss from the association that Sturgis contemplated with new complacency the happy result of his treatment, for when the gale subsided, and on the fourth day they ran once more into smooth and lazy waters, it was Stuyvesant's consuming desire to take up his bed and walk, except when Miss Ray was there to talk or read to him.
His case eventually excited so much compassion that Stuyvesant's sister interfered, and implored her brother so importunately that he was at last induced to liberate the unfortunate man. Let a firm Quaker resolve that he will not do something, and let a Governor Stuyvesant resolve that he shall do it, and it is indeed "Greek meeting Greek."
Yet Vinton attached importance to his aide-de-camp's opinion, and when Ray came out flat-footed, as it were, in support of Stuyvesant's views, the general was visibly gratified. But, except for these very few, Ray had spoken to unbelieving ears. Sternly the military lawyer took him in hand and began to probe. No need to enter into details.
In the village church he preached of an afternoon, the church which Stuyvesant had built and beside which he was buried, the church which was to stand another hundred years and which was then to give way to a house of worship to be called St. Mark's, which, in turn, two centuries and more after Stuyvesant's day, was still to be found standing in the core of a great metropolis.
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